


Winter Song

by orphan_account



Series: L'étoiles [2]
Category: Reign (TV)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Unrequited Love, spoilers for 1x16
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-03
Updated: 2014-04-03
Packaged: 2018-01-17 23:55:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1407364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Les rêves sont faits d'étoiles que vous ne pouvez jamais espérer atteindre.</p><p>or</p><p>Dreams are made of stars you can never hope to reach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Winter Song

**Author's Note:**

> This started out as Kenna commenting on Mary and Francis' relationship then I completely changed course and started writing about just Kenna. Oops. (I'm not sorry at all)

In her dreams, Kenna wishes for a pure love. 

A love with a faceless man waiting at the end of an aisle, his lips parted in awe, his eyes just slightly glassy as he watches her take her steps towards him. They would kneel beside each other, inscribing their names on a piece of paper that would fade, though their union would not. She would look at him through her lashes as they carefully wrote their names. He would smile reassuringly because that's what husbands are supposed to do on their wedding day.

Instead, she is barely able to hold herself up, the pounding of her blood in her ears nearly drowning out the sound of Sebastian saying his vows to her.

“I, Sebastian, take this woman to be my lawful wife under the eyes of god from this day forward,” he says, looking down at her. She cannot bring herself to raise her eyes to him and instead bows her head, tears leaking out of her eyes. 

Kenna does not cry in public. She rarely cries at all. She hates the feeling of hot tears rolling down her cheeks, the sound of her sobs rushing out of her, the feeling that she cannot breath for these emotions are too much, too hard to contain inside one body.

In her dreams, her husband undresses her slowly, brushing his fingers along her body lightly, sending shivers up her spine. He brings his face to hers, drowning the rest of the world out. His eyes are not brown like Henry's, or green like Sebastian's. They are their own color because they are anything but what her reality is. They have to be for it to be a dream and for Kenna to keep returning to it.

In her dreams, Kenna is Mary, walking down the aisle to her one true love, consummating her marriage in a room full of people yet in her own world with her new husband. They kiss in the corridors, not caring of eavesdroppers and the like. He finds ways of touching her always, a small hand on her back, brushing her hair behind her ear. They gravitate towards each other, unable to stay away for too long. No one else is even in the room when he is in her proximity. She knows who he is to her from the start, immediately drawn to him and unable to bite back embarrassing ramblings. Mary must rule a country, create heirs, but at least she will die knowing she was well and truly loved in return.

Kenna gets nothing in return. The king gets her body, her virtue as he makes empty promises of noblemen husbands. There once was a time when she dreaded the man he would set her up with, but know she craves the moment she will be free of him. This act, his final act of making her well and truly his, cements his power into stone. No matter how she has him in bed, she will never have him as he has her.

No one will have her in bed but the bastard beside her now and a new wrack of sobs shudders through her body. Contrary to popular belief, Kenna has a heart and it is not only her hopes of rising with a noble husband that are shattered that night.

She knows Bash is a good man. He is kind to those he loves, once you overlook what he did to his brother. It’s funny, Kenna always thought Bash was too much for Mary. He was never Francis, so to Mary he was never enough. But he was too reckless, too passionate, too wild for her queen. Mary needs someone to temper her, to bring to back to earth, to win her over with both logic and love. Francis offers protection from his country, but he also offers a certain feeling that Mary cannot have anywhere else. Those days where he was gone prove that well enough.

Kenna watches as the witnesses to her wedding exit the room. She watches as Mary walks out, her arm looped in Francis’. She watches as Bash’s eyes follow them, the way Francis wraps his arms around her in comfort, the way she leans into him, the barely noticeable moving of their lips. The young dauphin presses a kiss to the top of his queen’s head before they turn the corner. Bash swallows and looks down at his bride.

“You needn’t pretend,” she says, her lip curling. Bash’s pining after Mary is getting rather boring to be quite honest. She doesn’t quite understand why he keeps going back to her, why he professes his love for her when nothing can happen, when nothing _would_ happen. Francis has made mistakes, Mary has made mistakes and Bash has made mistakes but it is always Francis and Mary that find their way back to each other. It’s time Bash realizes that before he spends the rest of his life watching his love be utterly and completely devoted to someone she was never truly going to leave behind.

“I know how you feel for her and I don’t care,” she says, lying. She does care. She always cares. She cares that her husband does not have any semblance of a liking for her, that he is too busy loving someone he cannot have, that her life was set in stone in a matter of minutes, by the stroke of a quill and exchanged words that meant nothing, not really.

“Go after her for all I care. Just know it won’t do you much good,” she snaps. She is infuriated that he won’t respond. He just stands there, studying her.

“For God’s sake,” she says as she rolls her eyes. She stalks away from him, her heels clicking on the stone, matching her heartbeat, as if her eyes are not still burning from her tears and her blood not pumping through her veins at the force of a thousand rivers.

She does not care that he does not watch her go. She does not care that she will go to _their_ rooms in a matter of moments. She does not care that he is probably off to find someone else, that to him, there will always be that someone else. She does not care that no one’s fingers will ever caress her body, no one will give her what Francis gives Mary, no one’s eyes will be watering at the end of an aisle, no one’s lips will part in adoration, and no one will reach for her uncontrollably.

(Except that she does). 


End file.
